From e-commerce to Industry 4.0

Manufacturing is going through the same kind of upheaval that retail went through when e-commerce changed how businesses compete.

Traditional ways of producing are being replaced by data-driven ways of working, where processes are measured while they run.

Data changes how production is managed

With modern data collection, you can get an overview of:

• production units
• machines
• employees
• product types

You can also trace all the way down to the single item. That lets you follow a unit through the entire production flow instead of relying on spot checks.

What e-commerce has to do with it

The comparison with e-commerce is deliberate.

Smartphones and the financial crisis sped up online shopping and forced retailers to rethink:

• pricing
• inventory
• sales channels
• store formats

That shift happened because retailers used data better, instead of going on gut feeling alone.

Factories face the same choice

Industry faces the same challenge today.

Some factories keep running on old assumptions. Others use data to get a much faster and more accurate picture of how production is performing.

Here is a practical test: if you can't quickly answer detailed questions about your production, you are probably not yet managing with the data overview that Industry 4.0 makes possible.